Best Cloud Storage for Music 2018

There used to be a time when music files were big and storage was limited; a time before the mp3 file format. Today, however, thousands of songs might be inhabiting your hard drive and making a huge list in your music player of choice. To keep it all safe, we’ve assembled the best cloud storage for music.

Since there’s so much music, it’s tempting to use our best cloud storage providers to put it away without cluttering your hard drive. Using it, you can be sure your music will be available to you anywhere you are and that no hardware malfunction, virus, malware or theft will compromise it.

In this article, we’ll focus on storing the most songs for the least amount of money. If you want to backup rather than store your music files, check out our article on the best online backup services. Before we start with the list, let’s go over our criteria.

What Makes Cloud Storage the Best for Music

Our first priority will be value as we’d like to store as many songs as possible for little money. We’ll see what kind of pricing plans the services offer and in what variety. Most services will offer a free plan or at least a trial. If you’re simply looking for a bargain, read our best deals in cloud storage article.

Since we’re dealing with a lot of songs, there’d be no point in using cloud storage that doesn’t provide good upload speeds. The better the infrastructure (global data center distribution) that the service has, the faster your upload will be.

Getting your files online without it being a complicated chore is a must. Streamlined user experience will help with that. We’ll make sure that services provide just that and not a curse-ridden ordeal. Also, we want clients that run on desktop, web and mobile for added ease of use.

Music lovers are not resistant to the sharing craze that’s been going on lately. You’ll want to be able to share quickly, easily and to have options to share to social media. It would be interesting to invite others to share with you and that’s what upload links or group folder sharing allow.

Switzerland-based pCloud has been in the business since 2013, and it numbers eight million users today. It has a lot of big-league clients, too, including BMW, Coca-Cola and Twitter.

pCloud offers plans for personal and business plans to its clients. Personal users can choose between Premium and Premium plus, which cost $4.99 a month (500GB) and $9.99 a month (2TB), respectively. In addition to basic features, these pricing plans offer 30 days of file versioning and unlimited remote uploads (by pasting the file url). If you pay per year, you’ll get a discount, as well as if you pay for a lifetime plan.

When it comes to speed, pCloud performs similarly to other services. The connection to pCloud’s servers isn’t rock-solid, but it does reach higher speeds (5Mb/s being the average) than many other services.

The user experience is straightforward and enjoyable on all devices, but the web client provides the most streamlined experience. It’s easier to navigate, has more features, it’s very fast and gives you access to pCloud’s tools in one place. The desktop client is available for Windows, Mac and Linux (read our best storage for linux if you require that), while the mobile app is available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

Other Reasons Why We Like pCloud

Sharing with pCloud is easy, just click on the “share” button for your song and you’ll be able to share it to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ directly. If you’re sharing to pCloud subscribers you can just add a username. Otherwise, you can generate a link or send it via email.

Another interesting option is inviting people to your folder so they can view it and modify as if it were their own. If you want to protect your links, you can set expiry dates and passwords (premium plans only).

Affordable and flexible plans, easy sharing and good upload speeds help make pCloud our top pick for storing music. There’s also a free pricing plan that gives you 10GB. If you want to learn more about the service, read our in-depth pCloud review.

Sync.com is renowned for its security capabilities and user privacy. It helps that it’s based in Toronto, so its users benefit from some of the best privacy laws in the world. Other than that, other features helped it reach first place in our cloud storage comparison list.

If you want to use Sync.com as a non-premium user, you get 5GB of free storage with the Sync Starter plan. However, paid pricing plans are very competitive. Pro Personal plan offers 500GB for $49 a year or 2TB for $96 a year.

Initial upload and download speeds compare favorably to other services. Sync.com doesn’t restrict your bandwidth by default, but if your connection is weak you can throttle your speeds from the taskbar icon (if you use the desktop client).

The desktop client is available on Windows and OS X, but not on Linux. Thankfully, the web client is easy to navigate and provides access to all Sync.com features, so you can access it from any OS you like (although the desktop client is faster).

The web interface has several pages which show different information (links, shares, etc.). It looks very simple and that’s a good thing in our book.

Other Reasons Why We Like Sync.com

To share files you can generate a link or send an invite via email. If you want to share a folder you can invite specific users or generate a link. Other users will be able to download your folder in .zip format. Also, you can share upload links, which will let others share their songs with you, by using your storage space.

There are different types of permissions to set when you share. To see what you’ve shared with others you can use the “shares” page. Link passwords and expiry dates are also available. To know more read our Sync.com review.

Sync.com is great for keeping your audio files secure and private, but in this case, it lacks a media player. The feature is not essential for storing but it would have been a good addition.

One of the most controversial cloud storage services. MEGA was founded by the notorious Kim Dotcom in 2013. He’s no longer associated with MEGA, but the company lives on and advertises as “the privacy company” because it provides zero-knowledge encryption and is based in privacy-friendly New Zealand.

One of the prime reasons for going the MEGA way was its 50GB free plan but since 2017 that storage space evaporates after a month and leaves you with just 15GB. After completing some easy tasks you can get it back, but then it disappears again after 180 days. MEGA doesn’t come close to being competitive with other services as its 500GB plan costs more than some ask for 2TB (read our MEGA review for more on all this).

Upload speeds are about 25 percent slower than we’d like, and the download speed isn’t much better. There were no issues moving smaller files (under 20MB), so syncing files like mp3 songs will not be a problem for MEGA. During upload, the connection varied in strength so some uploads failed. Download speeds were more steady and didn’t fail as much, thus achieving better time.

MEGA’s browser app is simple and there’s not much that new users need to learn. Primary features are on the left, while the secondary features are located in the hamburger menu in the top-right corner of the screen. Actions are done by using the controls in the top menu while performing actions on individual files requires you to click on a drop-down menu on the file itself.

For sync, MEGA follows in Dropbox’s footsteps; it revolves around a simple sync folder. Desktop clients are available for Windows and Mac, while the mobile apps are offered for Android and iOS and are pretty easy to use as well.

Other Reasons Why We Like MEGA

MEGA doesn’t offer the same strategy when it comes to sharing like other services do. You can’t share files with individuals using their email address. Instead, you can only generate a link to that content. Still, this link is zero-knowledge and MEGA can’t see what you’re sharing.

If others want to use the link, they will have to use a decryption key which is created when you generate a link.

If you have a Pro subscription, you can add expiry dates to your links. You can still share folders via email and grant read, edit or full access rights to individuals. However, there’s no way to create separate upload links or set download limits.

MediaFire lacks some of the standard features among the best online storage providers, like desktop syncing and versioning, but it compensates for this with generous free storage, low pricing and good mobile support for images. The service has more than 43 million registered users. Read our in-depth review for more information on MediaFire.

Media Fire

The 10GB of free storage might not be among the highest amounts we’ve seen, but there are several ways to gain more space (up to 40GB) including referring friends, installing the mobile app and connecting and posting to Facebook and Twitter.

If that’s not enough, you can upgrade with a “Pro” plan which offers 1TB for $5 a month (or $3.75 if you pay for the whole year). The service is, it seems, constantly offering a 50 percent discount on its yearly subscription.

MediaFire doesn’t win any medals in the upload department, but its download and upload speeds are steady. There’s no way to upload an entire folder at once so you’ll have to upload files manually and that slows the process considerably.

The web interface is good looking though some icons are due for an update, and it has a clear layout with a simple drag-and-drop feature. There’s a folder tree to the side, and with it, you can browse easily (if you prefer grid, there’s that, too).

It’s fortunate that the web app is there to compensate for the surprising lack of a desktop client. The mobile app performs well, but it’s more focused than the web interface since it’s built around photo backup.

Other Reasons Why We Like MediaFire

Sharing is standard and straightforward. You can send someone a link and they can download your file. There’s a dedicated icon that allows you to quickly copy that link to the clipboard.

Livedrive has experienced many changes over the years, but the biggest change in quality happened after the service moved to the UK. Once separate applications are now all integrated into a single interface. Not all is well, however, since new visitors to the site will likely find it difficult to understand the products due to the pricing scheme being very different from the rest of the market.

Livedrive offers no free storage. Backup offers unlimited space for $8 a month (or $80 a year) but you can only do it for one PC. They also exclude USB, CD or DVD. The Briefcase plan gives you 2TB of storage across multiple devices for $16 a month ($160 per year). The final plan, Pro Suite, offers unlimited backup across five devices and 5TB of sync across multiple devices. Its priced at $25 a month, or $250 a year.

Livedrive wasn’t very fast on our upload test. For some reason, it was a little faster on Windows. The download speed wasn’t very good either. Interestingly enough, folders are downloaded as .zip archives.

The web interface doesn’t have any surprises, it’s pretty similar to the cloud storage standard. Though it calls folders “briefcases”, which you use to upload your files. Features are located in the sidebar on the left, while you can see your files and other options on the right.

Installing the desktop app wasn’t smooth as it tried to download prerequisite libraries on its own and it failed. Only the Pro suite offers everything in the desktop installation package but you can customize the basic package with paid add-ons. The interface itself is sufficiently attractive and compact. It provides easy access to the main features by the way of the menu bar.

Other Reasons Why We Like Livedrive

Sharing is very simple; your files can be accessed through a web page, and in order to share them, just send them your url. This means there’s no selective sharing. Anyone who has the link can access all your files.

Sharing files with Livedrive is surprisingly easy.

Livedrive deserves to be in the last spot since it has no free storage, its products aren’t easy to understand, the pricing plans are far from competitive and there’s no easy way to cancel your subscription.

Final Thoughts

Sending your favorite music to an extended vacation in the cloud seems like a no-brainer. Your music might not be on your hard drive, but it’s still accessible and you’ll also be able to share it with your friends and family.

One of the services provided here will be the best for you. We think pCloud should be that service, or otherwise Sync.com. The rest don’t come close in terms of value, sync speed, ease of use or sharing. Do you have any thoughts or comments? Let us know below. Thank you for reading.

Branko Vlajin

Branko has a bachelor’s degree in software engineering and likes to write cloud storage, backup and privacy laws. Naturally, he thinks Assange and Snowden are champions of the internet age. In his spare time, he does all sorts of stuff, including photography, reading, salsa dancing and learning languages. He also likes barbecue, hiking, traveling and skiing. Favorite movie never made: Jodorowsky’s Dune.